Repeating History
by Lisse
Summary: With the shadows of her murdered parents and a disgraced hero looming over her, Ron and Hermione's daughter starts her first year at Hogwarts. The world needs the Girl Who Lived. Too bad Lizzie Weasley doesn't want the job.
1. Prologue

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. This story was written for fun, not profit. 

Repeating History

It was the worst night of Neville Longbottom's life. 

It could have been worse, the others told him. The Death Eaters had been coordinating this attack for weeks, if not months. Others could have died too. Ron and Hermione Weasley could have been the first of many casualties, not the final deaths that promised to hail the end of the bloodshed. Voldemort was gone now - really gone, not merely banished to a shadowy half-existence. His followers were scattered, and being rounded up almost faster than the Ministry could process them. People were dancing in the streets and setting off fireworks. 

The war was finally, truly over. 

None of these things made Neville feel any better. None of these things undid what his former friend had done. And none of these things - none of the what-ifs or might-have-beens - brought back Cecily Weasley's parents. 

The little girl was crawling around the small office he shared with Anthony Goldstein, utterly heedless of how special she was or what her future might hold. She was both adventurous and inquisitive, a combination of traits that bespoke her heritage as surely as her wild brown hair and clear blue eyes. The part of Neville that hadn't quite accepted the reality of the situation pitied whoever wound up raising her, because the Girl Who Lived was going to be a handful. 

That was what they were calling her already: the Girl Who Lived. Never mind that her fame was tainted by her predecessor's actions - that no one would be able to look at her without wondering, deep down, if she shared more with Harry Potter than an honorific. The comparisons were already coming fast and thick. Cecily was different from Harry. She _had to_ be different from Harry. The other Aurors were latching onto those differences like a lifeline, as if they would change the fate that awaited the little girl. 

Cecily would spend the rest of her life living in the shadow of the man who had betrayed her parents. 

Neville put his head in his hands and tried to blot out the memory of Harry calmly saying that yes, he had sold out his two best friends to Voldemort. Nor had Ron and Hermione been his only victims. Looming large over those memories was Harry calmly explaining that he had planned to kill Neville's fiancée and fellow Auror - Ron Weasley's little sister Ginny. He still planned to kill Ginny, in fact. He had said that over and over again: Ginny was going to die, Ginny was going to pay, Ginny was as good as dead. 

There had to be something Neville was missing. There just had to be. But Harry had admitted his crimes under hastily administered Veritaserum, and the record was sitting on his desk, right in front of him. 

For the first time, he was glad that Sirius Black hadn't lived to see what his godson had become. It would have destroyed him. 

The man he had summoned didn't bother to knock. He just slid into the office as if he owned the entire Ministry. "You wanted to see me?" 

Neville looked up at Draco Malfoy, whom he trusted about as far as he could throw a dragon. Dumbledore trusted him, though, and right now that had to be enough. Besides, it was a well-known fact that Neville and his former classmate couldn't stand the sight of each other. No one would expect him to entrust such a dangerous man with such a precious burden. 

He lifted Cecily off the floor and handed her over. 

For a moment Malfoy stared at him as if he had grown another head. Then he held the little girl at arm's length and glared. "What am I supposed to do with...this?" 

"That's Cecily Weasley," Neville pointed out in his most emotionless voice. "I'm sure you've heard about her." 

He obviously had. Still glaring, Malfoy turned his attention to the squirming toddler and attempted to get a better grip on her. Cecily responded by whining and battering him with a little fist, face scrunched up in outrage at being manhandled. As she struggled, the bloody bandage wrapped around her forehead came loose and fluttered to the floor. 

"That's..." Malfoy shook his head and tried to hand back the little girl. "No. Hell, no. I don't want anything to do with her." 

"I'm not asking you to adopt her," Neville said tightly. "I want you to take her to her relatives. Answer any questions they have, and give them these." He handed over a packet of letters, hoping that Dumbledore was a better judge of Andrew and Louise Cunningham than he had been of Vernon and Petunia Dursley. 

Malfoy didn't look convinced. "Why me, Longbottom?" 

Neville glared at him, and for a moment he nearly shouted that if he had his way, he would have taken Cecily to his home and raised her himself. But he didn't say a word. He just stood behind his desk, fuming, attempting to get his rage under control. It was all he could do not to leap over his desk and throttle the bastard then and there. 

"Dumbledore says you can be trusted," he said finally. 

Whatever answer Malfoy had been expecting, that clearly wasn't it. He was silent for a moment, still holding Cecily awkwardly as she fussed. When he did speak, it was in that sly, calculating voice Neville had come to loathe. "What's to stop me from handing me over to the first Death Eater I find?" 

"The Death Eaters hate you almost as much as I do," Neville pointed out. "And if you hurt her, I'll kill you." It wasn't a threat, just a statement of fact. 

Malfoy sneered, but said nothing. He just adjusted his grip on the Girl Who Lived, his lip curling in disgust as she stopped whining and began to gnaw on his obviously expensive shirt. "I don't want to hear from you after this," he said. Neville could hear how strained his voice was, as if it was taking every ounce of will he had to stay civil. "The next time I see this brat, I'll hex her." 

"Get out of my office," Neville growled, and had the slight satisfaction of Malfoy turn and stalk out without another word. He could hear Cecily babbling as she vanished down the corridor and out of the magical world. 

Less than a minute after Malfoy had left, another individual slipped in. She didn't bother to knock either, but then again, she had never needed to. 

"Neville..." Ginny said softly, and threw herself against his chest in a desperate, crushing hug. He didn't bother to say anything. He just wrapped his arms around her and tried unsuccessfully not to cry. 

~*~ 

Somewhere high above England, very far removed from the Ministry of Magic, Cecily Weasley peered at Draco Malfoy's pale, pinched face and babbled happily. She was unaware of who she was or what she had just become -- or of the fact that there was only other person like her in the world. 

On her forehead, half-hidden under an untameable mass of bushy brown hair, was a bloody cut that would become a lightning-shaped scar. 


	2. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: _Harry Potter_ is the property of J. K. Rowling. This story was written for fun, not profit. 

Repeating History   
Chapter One

_2011_   
_ten years later_

It had been a decade since Draco Malfoy had first set foot in this tiny town, and he had privately hoped that he would never need to come here again. It was a cozy place, full of small homes and overgrown gardens and children scampering everywhere, no doubt enjoying the last of the summer holiday. He was willing to bet his last Galleon that everyone here knew everyone else's name. 

In other words, it was a little piece of his own personal Hell. 

Hands stuffed in his pockets, the wizard stood in the middle of the pavement and turned narrowed gray eyes to the nearest group of brats disturbing the peace. They paid him no mind, although the adults certainly thought he was interesting enough to gape at. Draco doubted that any of these simpletons had ever seen anything quite like him before. He wore his silver-blond hair long and kept it swept back in a ponytail, and he sported khakis and an expensive button-down shirt -- the latest in Muggle fashion, courtesy of Mrs. Virginia Weasley-Longbottom herself. Thank Merlin, he couldn't have looked more out of place if he tried. 

The children hurrying past him, on the other hand, fit right in. They were all between ten and twelve years old and were busy ducking behind hedges and fences as their ringleader closed in on their victim. And the girl he watched closely was unquestionably in charge of her surroundings, which was more than could have ever been said for either of her parents. She was tall and wiry, all long uncoordinated limbs and infectious laughs and far too many freckles. Her red tee shirt and faded jeans were covered with grass stains and dirt and her sandals were filthy. That bushy brown hair, never exactly controlled, was in complete disarray. At this angle, it was impossible to see the scar on her forehead -- the lightning bolt that marked her as Cecily Weasley, the Girl Who Lived. 

She answered to Lizzie Cunningham nowadays. 

As Draco watched, the newest savior of the world leapt over a fence and pointed a water pistol at a hapless neighbor. She had a good aim. When her victim bellowed like an enraged elephant and threatened to have her arrested, the girl beamed and ran for it. Her followers emerged from hiding and hurried after her, Lizzie herself bringing up the rear. 

Oh, yes. She was definitely a Weasley. Idiocy was clearly genetic. 

Delivering her letter wouldn't be a problem, Draco decided as he sidestepped the belligerent neighbor. Her adoptive father, Andrew Cunningham, was a Squib distantly related to the Weasleys, and he and his wife had only been allowed to take the little brat in on the condition that they never interfere with her magical education. They wouldn't dream of it, of course. They knew exactly how special Lizzie was, and they knew the way the world worked. 

And as much as Draco hated to admit it, the world needed Lizzie. Things weren't stable, and hadn't been for a long time. There had been rumblings, threats of violence and bloodshed and dark magics, but nothing concrete so far. Potter was secure for the time being, or at least as secure as Potter could ever be. But who knew how long all that was going to last? 

He almost -- _almost_ -- felt sorry for the little brat. Lizzie may have been the Girl Who Lived, but the world she was heading into didn't worship her. She would be treated with caution or derided, held at arm's length in case she shared more with Potter than a scar. Draco grimaced. Certainly _his_ children wouldn't be allowed to associate with her. 

No one deserved the future he was about to hand her. Not even a spawn of the Mudblood and the Weasel. 

_Enjoy this while you can_, he told the little terror, who was still wreaking havoc in the distance. _It's not going to last_. 

~~

As far as Lizzie Cunningham was concerned, it had been a good day. 

Her neighbor, one Eustace Finch, had threatened to have her arrested no less than six times, and that had been _before_ he discovered what she and her friends had done to his garden hose, much less to his trowel. She was muddy and had grass in her hair and holes in her jeans, and all of these things were quite all right with her. Lizzie was vaguely aware that girls her age should be preoccupied with pretty clothes and handsome boys, but she didn't have time for that sort of thing. If she couldn't play football in it, she didn't want to wear it, and handsome boys were little more than a convenient target for her newest water pistol. 

Lizzie knew that maturity happened. It was just that like soap and good marks and responsibility, it tended to happen to other people. Besides, she was a Cunningham and Cunninghams were allowed to be weird. It was practically a rule. Far be it for her to disobey the rules, after all. 

When all was said and done, she wasn't even the oddest one in the family. 

At the moment she was sitting at the kitchen table in her small, rather overcrowded home, happily eating a package of cookies for dinner because her parents had forgotten to buy food, much less cook it. Her older brothers Andy and Quinn and her older sister Jane probably could have scrounged something, but they were off doing mysterious teenage things that Lizzie wasn't entirely sure she wanted to know about. At the very least, they weren't inclined to share when she tried to interrogate them. Silly gits. 

The lack of any dinner whatsoever was hardly an unusual situation. Lizzie's mother was a mathematics professor and her father was a particularly scatterbrained accountant. Occasionally the pair forgot that they even had children, much less that these children needed to eat. Lizzie didn't mind in the slightest. She was an independent girl and was perfectly fine with parents who always took a few minutes to remember that their children were not, in fact, very peculiar-looking numbers. 

"No cookie!" her little sister Meggie chirped around a mouthful of chocolate cereal. Meggie was three in physical years and about four hundred and ninety-five in terms of sheer destructive creativity. Like all of Lizzie's siblings, she was short and had red hair. 

Lizzie looked up from what was left of the cookies. "And why not?" 

"Cookie bad," Meggie said, and did her best little angel impression -- not terribly difficult, since she was possibly the cutest child on the planet. All she needed was a halo and wings. 

Lizzie didn't buy it for a second. "You can't have my cookies, Meggie." 

The innocent cherub ploy vanished as quickly as it had appeared. Meggie stuck out a chocolate-coated tongue and flounced off in a huff, cereal box hugged possessively to her chest. For now, at least, the cookies were safe. 

"Little brat," Lizzie muttered, and stuffed another cookie in her mouth before turning her attention to the newspaper spread out in front of her. Contrary to popular opinion, she actually did like to read. It was just that her subject matter was usually football magazines and joke books, with a foray into comics if she was feeling particularly adventurous. Lizzie was cursed with an overactive imagination, which meant that authority figures tended to keep works of fiction away from her. She had spent an entire year demanding that people call her Double-Oh-Seven, and two summers trying to convince the town children to start their own Justice League. 

Sadly, that last plan had never left the ground -- although she did remember her parents being bemused when she insisted that her code name was the Magician. Lizzie liked the idea of magic. It made things easier to blow up. Try as they might, her parents couldn't convince her otherwise. 

Technically they weren't even her parents. Andrew and Louise Cunningham were her real parents' third cousins or something like that, and they had adopted Lizzie when she was just a year old. Her birth parents, Ron and Hermione, had been killed a short time before. She had a few photographs of those two, vague memories of lots of light, and a lightning-shaped scar that ran from her left brow up to her hairline. She liked to claim it was a souvenir from some epic battle with local bullies, but the truth was that she had had it for as long as she could remember, and had apparently received it on the night her parents had died. The Cunninghams had been vague on the details, but Lizzie had been left with the impression that Ron and Hermione had probably been murdered. 

She had never been interested in finding out the gory bits. In all the movies her parents made her watch, little orphans sat around whinging or moping or (in extreme cases) bursting into song. Lizzie had no time for any of that -- not if she was going to keep terrorizing Eustace Finch. She had her own life and she was quite happy with it, thank you very much. 

Her biggest concern at the moment was getting that cereal away from Meggie. Abandoning the empty cookie package, Lizzie wiped crumbs on her jeans and began creeping toward the living room. Agent Double-Oh-Cunningham was back in business. 

~~

It was with some trepidation that Draco approached the small house with its mismatched curtains. There were toys scattered around the garden like a garish plastic obstacle course, which made him feel singularly ridiculous as he picked his way around a tricycle, blocks, chalk and least two pails of mud. 

Longbottom had warned him that there were other children here. However, he had neglected to tell him about the booby traps. 

He made it to the door in one fairly intact piece, and for a moment he just stood with his hand poised a few centimeters from the doorbell. For the first time in many years, he was actually -- well, not nervous, because no self-respecting Malfoy ever got nervous. But he _was_ experiencing a sort of trepidation. The last time he had interacted with Cecily Weasley had been the night her parents had died. He had _seen_ her after that, but only from a distance. It had been imperative that she be raised as a Muggle, and not know what she was until she attended Hogwarts. Longbottom had said so repeatedly, although why he felt the need to tell Draco was beyond him. _He_ didn't care about the little terror. 

What he was feeling, then, surely wasn't sympathy. Absolutely not. Whatever happened to this girl, his duty to her was over once he got her to Platform Nine and Three-Quarters. 

He rang the doorbell. 

The creature who answered the door was about three years old, redheaded, and quite possibly feral. It was probably female, although the knee-length jumper and giant fedora made its gender impossible to determine. It was clutching a box of chocolate cereal as if its life depended on it. 

"Who you?" it demanded. 

Draco kept himself from recoiling -- barely -- and firmly reminded himself of his youngest son, who was five years old and unfailingly polite and never, ever wore a fedora. He eyed the creature carefully, just in case it was rabid. "My name is Mr. Malfoy," he said. "Where are your parents?" 

The creature gave this due consideration. "Mummy gotta abacus," it concluded. "Papa gotta 'puter." 

For a moment Draco wondered what horrible crime he had committed to deserve this. He was sure his own children had never been this inarticulate. Or this messy. "I need to talk to your mother and father," he said with as much patience as he could muster. 

There was another moment of careful thought. "Talk to Lizzie!" the creature finally concluded, looking extremely pleased with itself. Beaming from ear to ear, it turned and bellowed "LIZZIE!" in a spray of crumbs. 

With a _thumpthump_ of stampeding feet, another girl appeared at the door. For the first time in ten years, Draco got a close look at the Girl Who Lived. She met his stare steadily, utterly sure of herself. Neither her parents nor Potter had ever possessed such self-confidence. 

"What do _you_ want?" she demanded, hauling the creature back from the door. 

Draco fought down the urge to grit his teeth. "My name is Mr. Malfoy. I need to talk to your parents." 

"Mum and Dad?" The girl's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "You're not from that children's services place, are you? Because if you are I'll break off your arms and beat you with them." "Can I come in or not?" Draco snapped, and had the satisfaction of seeing Lizzie Cunningham's eyes widen for a moment. Her indignant expression was almost identical to her Mudblood mother's. Then she rallied. Her jaw set, her shoulders squared, and her hands balled into fists. 

"No, you can't come in!" she snapped. "Get off our doorstep, you arse!" 

Draco had enough time to see the jumper-clad creature stick a brown tongue out at him before the Girl Who Lived slammed the door in his face. 

He rang the doorbell a second time. 

This time Lizzie Cunningham appeared right away. She took one look at him, made a very rude gesture, and slammed the door yet again before he could even open his mouth. 

Draco rubbed the bridge of his nose. Somewhere out there, the Weasel's ghost was egging his horrible spawn on. He was sure of it. 

Fine. He was tired of approaching this like a Muggle. With an unpleasant smirk, Draco walked away from the door and picked his way around the toys again. There were other ways to get at the idiot girl's idiot parents -- much less polite ways. This was going to be fun. 

~~

By late evening Lizzie had forgotten about the obnoxious visitor entirely. There were more important things for her to worry about -- namely the fact that Mr. Finch had rung her parents and was threatening to have her sent to juvenile hall the next time she destroyed his garden hose. For a good half-hour, the assembled Cunningham children watched with considerable amusement as the phone traveled between their mother and father. Neither of her parents seemed to know what to do with it, and eventually they passed it over to nine-year-old Albert. They had seen him talking on the phone once or twice, and figured he probably had some inkling of what one was supposed to do with a neighbor who wouldn't shut up. 

While Albert happily tortured Mr. Finch, Lizzie sprawled across an overstuffed sofa and wrestled her older brothers and sister for the remote control. Although Andy, Quinn and Jane were all older than her, Lizzie was a tall girl and had no qualms about using cushions and the occasional elbow in her quest for control of the television. Meggie cheered them on indiscriminately -- or, when words failed, threw cereal at them. 

"Gerroff!" Quinn bellowed and elbowed Jane in the stomach. She tumbled off the sofa with a yelp, grabbed Andy's leg, and hauled him off with her. While they were extracting themselves from an undignified pile on the floor, Lizzie took the opportunity to jump on Quinn and whack him with a cushion. He muttered something incoherent about Lizzie's future love life and pushed her off the sofa into the pile. By then Jane had untangled herself and, with a truly evil smile, snatched the fedora off Meggie's head and launched it at Andy, who had about half a second to scramble away from the hat before Meggie let out a indignant shriek and attempted to bite off her older brother's kneecap. 

Lizzie glanced at her older sister while Andy swore and hopped around the room on one foot, trying in vain to dislodge Meggie. "That was playing dirty." 

"I got the remote, didn't I?" Jane asked, and reached toward the coveted item just in time to have Quinn snatch it away from her. A moment later, both teenagers were squabbling and calling each other all kinds of names as they fought for it. Lizzie smiled happily, snatched the remote, and tried to find her favorite cartoon. She turned the volume all the way up, just the way she always did. There was no such thing as a quiet night in the Cunningham household. 

Given this situation, it was a small miracle that anyone bothered to notice the blond man appearing in the middle of the fray. It was entirely possible no one would have if Meggie hadn't removed her teeth from Andy's shin, launched herself across the room, tripped over the TV cord and unplugged it, and then clung to their peculiar visitor's leg with a happy smile. 

Silence descended, after a fashion. It lasted for a good five seconds, shattering the long-standing record in that household. 

"Who let the git in?" Andy finally asked. 

That opened the floodgates. All six Cunningham children tried to talk at once. The two Cunningham adults looked up from books with words like "quantum" or "linear" in their titles, shrugged, and went back to reading. These things sorted themselves out sooner in later. 

The harassed visitor raised a pointed stick in the air and yelled something in a language Lizzie didn't recognize. There was a bright flash, and suddenly she was being flung back against the wall. When she tried to haul herself off, she found that she couldn't do much more than turn her head. It was as if someone had glued her there. From the way her siblings were swearing, they were in much the same predicament. Albert was still clutching the phone and explaining to Mr. Finch that he couldn't talk because a magician had just attacked them, could he try again later? Meggie had somehow wound up on the ceiling instead of the wall, and Jane, Quinn, and Andy were all glaring at the newcomer and informing him of exactly what they were going to do to him once they were set free. 

Then Lizzie's father blinked and set down his book. "Oh. Oh! Mr. Malfoy! Why didn't you say so in the first place?" 

The silence lasted ten whole seconds this time. Lizzie and her siblings were at an utter loss. So, for that matter, was the newcomer. He was staring at Andrew Cunningham as if he was the kind of strange specimen normally found under rocks. 

"Your spawn attacked me," Mr. Malfoy pointed out at last. He was tall and pale and blond, and beside him Lizzie's parents looked very plain indeed. They were as short and redheaded as Lizzie's siblings, and Louise Cunningham had smudges of graphite on her nose and cheeks. 

"I'm sure there was a misunderstanding," Lizzie's father said. He ran his fingers through his thick, tangled hair. "Oh dear. This is about the letter, isn't it? Are you sure we don't have another few years? She can't be that old already, unless...Louise, what year is it?" If he noticed that his children were glued to the walls, he gave no sign. 

Mr. Malfoy's pale, pinched face got slightly red. It made him look blotchy, a fact that Lizzie filed away for future reference. "She's eleven years old. I'm taking her tomorrow." 

"That's you, Lizzie!" Albert hissed. Lizzie ignored him, because she was scowling at Mr. Malfoy and slowly curling her hands into fists. If there was one thing she hated, it was being talked about as if she wasn't there. She didn't mind her mother and father doing that -- they never knew _anything_ was there half the time -- but for someone to do it on purpose was completely different. 

Indeed, Lizzie's mother glanced pointedly at her before she answered their strange visitor. "We're not going to stop you from taking her," she said, eliciting an outraged squawk from the topic at hand. "It's just so soon, that's all." 

"No one asked for your opinion." Mr. Malfoy turned away from Lizzie's parents, nose upturned as if he was disgusted by the sight of them, and peered at Lizzie instead. She recognized him from the front door incident and strained to pull herself off the wall. When she got free she was going to pound him into the ground and drag him around by that ponytail of his and then she was going to do something _really_ horrible. 

She'd make him babysit Meggie. All by himself. For a _week_. 

Quinn strained against the invisible glue. "What're you going to do with Lizzie?" 

"_I'm_ not doing anything with her," Mr. Malfoy pointed out. "I want nothing to do with her." He pointed at Lizzie with his stick, as if he was loathe to look at her any more than he had to. "I'm taking her back to..." He hesitated, obviously searching for an appropriately scathing word. All he came up with was "...her kind." 

"Is she insane? Are you taking her to an institution?" Andy sounded far too pleased with this. If she hadn't been the one being talked about, Lizzie would have thought it was a pretty neat idea too. She had always wanted to try sticking Mr. Finch in a straitjacket. 

Jane gave her brother a withering look. "He's not taking her to an institution. He's shanghaing her or something. This is a kidnapping." She, too, didn't look terribly worried. Somewhere around the ceiling, Meggie proclaimed that she, too, wanted to be shanghaied, while Albert added that it wasn't fair at all that Lizzie got to have all the fun. 

The combined chorus of six angry Cunningham children seemed to be too much for Mr. Malfoy. "No one's being kidnapped!" he snapped, the blotchy spots on his face growing more pronounced by the moment. "No one is being shanghaied! You all deserve to be in institutions, but no one's sending you there either! I'm just here for her!" He pointed his stick right at Lizzie again and glared at her as if this was all her fault. She gave him a two-fingered salute and went back to trying to free herself from the glue. 

"Why do you want Lizzie?" Quinn's voice was very quiet and more dangerous than anything Lizzie had ever heard in her life. He was eighteen and her oldest brother, and just then she realized that if anything happened to her, he would personally rip Mr. Malfoy in two. Just then she decided Quinn was her favorite person in the world. 

Mr. Malfoy didn't even dignify him with a glance. His attention was on Lizzie. For once he didn't sound angry or condescending. "Because her name is Cecily Weasley. She's a witch." 

There were a few moments of quiet as Lizzie gave this new information due consideration. Then she narrowed her eyes and looked Mr. Malfoy right in the eye. 

"Like hell," she said. 


	3. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: I don't own _Harry Potter_. This story was written for fun, not profit. 

Repeating History   
Chapter Two 

~~ 

"You did _what?_" 

Neville Longbottom, rising star of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement and darling of the wizarding world, took a hasty step back from his wife. "I sent Malfoy to get Cecily," he repeated. "Why did you _think_ I needed those Muggle clothes?" 

"You could have told me!" Ginny Weasley-Longbottom advanced on her husband with quick steps, her voice rising as she drew closer to him. Behind her, their twin sons peeked around a corner and exchanged identical grins. Their mum was about to go spare. This was going to be fun. 

Neville certainly didn't share their opinion, although he had stopped backing away from Ginny. Admittedly this was because she had backed him against a wall, but he still felt this was an act of bravery meriting some sort of recognition. "It's safer this way. No one's going to expect Malfoy to be the one bringing Cecily back. You know how people feel about her. The Ministry doesn't need people trying to send her back to the Muggle world in case...." He trailed off, grimacing. 

Ginny finished for him. "In case she turns out to be like Harry?" she asked softly. When Neville nodded, all the anger seemed to drain out of her. She closed the remaining space between them and slid her arms around his neck, letting him hold her for a moment. It should have been easier to talk about Harry after a decade, but it wasn't. That was especially true for the two of them. When Harry had distanced himself from Cecily's parents in sixth year, Neville and Ginny had tried to reach out to him, hoping that the common bonds they shared might help. 

For a while, it had seemed to work. But that was before seventh year and afterwards, when things had gone downhill. Now Neville wondered if they had only delayed the inevitable. 

He forced his attention back to the present. "I'm having Malfoy bring her through the Leaky Cauldron," he said at last, his voice muffled by her hair. "I'll meet them in Diagon Alley myself. The last thing we need is the Ministry getting ideas." 

"And people need to get used to her eventually. I don't want anyone giving her trouble." Ginny's voice grew harsh very quickly. She was fiercely protective of the niece she hadn't seen in ten years, just like the rest of the Weasleys. Unlike Harry, Cecily wouldn't be coming into this strange new world alone. Far from it. She had grandparents and uncles and aunts and a plethora of cousins all waiting to welcome her. There would be plenty of problems for her to deal with, but being isolated certainly wouldn't be one of them. 

_Speaking of cousins._ Neville glanced over the top of Ginny's head at their eight-year-old sons, who looked rather disappointed that their mum had stopped mid-outburst. Franklin and Ronald spent far too much time around their uncles Fred and George, whom they worshipped and seemed intent on imitating. 

"Are you and Mum gonna get mushy?" Ronald asked, wrinkling his nose in distaste. Behind him, Franklin crossed his eyes and made exaggerated gagging noises. 

Ginny detached from Neville and rounded on the twins with her hands planted on her hips. She was hardly a homemaker, but she was still Molly Weasley's daughter. "What are you two doing down here already? I thought I told you two to clean your room." 

"We _did!_" Franklin protested, bristling with righteous indignation. 

Ginny's eyes narrowed. "Would _I_ think it's clean?" 

The twins exchanged nervous glances. In all likelihood, their room still looked like several hurricanes had wandered through it. 

Ginny was _not_ amused. "I'm going to go check," she said, and started for the stairs. 

Identical expressions of utter panic flashed across the twins' faces. "Wait!" Ronald yelled, planting himself between his mother and the stairs. "We...we still gotta...." He hesitated, fumbling for some kind of excuse. 

"There's stuff we gotta do!" yelped Franklin, the more direct of the two. He grabbed his brother by the arm. They disappeared around the corner and pounded up the stairs, yelling at each other about whose turn it was to stuff their toys under the bed. Neville didn't hold out much hope of their room ever being clean. The odds of the twins actually tidying up properly was somewhere up there with the proverbial snowball's chances in Hell. 

"They take after your side of the family," he said when the noise had died down. 

Ginny made a face, but didn't dispute the claim. Instead she sighed and leaned against his shoulder, frowning at some image only she could see. "Cecily's going to get more family than she knows what to do with." 

He heard the unspoken fears in that statement. "I'm sure she'll like them," Neville said, and reached over to squeeze her shoulder. "She's a Weasley. What could possibly go wrong?" 

~~

This was going completely, utterly, horribly wrong. 

Draco hadn't been aware that he was following a script until the moment Weasley's brat decided to turn it on its ear. It wasn't a great script, admittedly, but it was a tried-and-true one. He would tell the little waste of oxygen she was a witch, she would be all giddy and happy to leave the Muggle world, and he would get to foist her on Longbottom once he had dragged her off to Diagon Alley. Some part of him liked that script, because it meant Lizzie would regard him as her own personal hero for rescuing her from the mundane world she had grown up in. If that wasn't spitting on her parents' graves, he didn't know what was. 

Only it wasn't working that way at all. 

He pulled Lizzie off the wall with a wave of his wand, managing only a halfhearted smirk as she slid down the ugly floral wallpaper and landed on her rear end. For a moment she just sat there scowling up at him, hands balled into fists, and he realized with a shock that she was absolutely and completely unafraid of him. He had just done things that should have seemed impossible to her, yet she just didn't care. She was supposed to be like Potter, overawed and gaping at everything like a slack-jawed half-wit. Being unimpressed shouldn't have been part of the equation. 

"_You_," she said, "are _such_ an arse." 

"Language, dear." This was from Louise Cunningham, who had reintroduced herself to reality long enough to take a stab at parenting. Her husband was watching the fiasco with his head tilted to one side, as if all of this was a puzzle that needed to be sorted out. Draco didn't so much hate the two adult Muggles as feel they weren't worth his time. Besides, he wanted to interact with them as little as possible. It had taken him over an hour to explain Lizzie's peculiar situation when he had first delivered her to her new family -- not because the Cunninghams had any difficulty grasping the concept of magic, but because they had kept steering the conversation back to calculus and supply-side economics. 

It all came down to math. Draco hated math. 

With a supreme effort, he fought down the urge to hex the Cunninghams and kept his full attention on the Girl Who Lived. "How do you think I just did that?" he asked irritably, twitching the tip of his wand to encompass her siblings, all of whom were still attached to the walls. 

Lizzie shrugged. "Glue?" 

"Could be magnets," one of her Muggle siblings chimed in. 

"Velcro," said another. "Bet you anything it's Velcro." 

"Are you mental? It's suction!" 

"Wires?" 

"Might be aliens." 

"Nah. Hypnotism." 

"So he's Houdini?" 

"Houdini was a _magician_, genius. And he's dead." 

"He's a zombie?" 

"Cool! Think he'll eat our brains?" 

All of this took place in the space of a few seconds. Draco couldn't get a word in -- not with the five Muggle children very cheerfully theorizing about whether or not he was a flesh-eating zombie magician. The entire conversation was very matter-of-fact, as if they were attacked with modified Repelling Charms every day and regularly discussed their merits over afternoon tea. Lizzie wasn't participating in the debate, but she was following it with obvious interest. Draco risked a glance up at the ceiling and, sure enough, found the jumper-clad creature grinning at him like a redheaded hyena. He looked away quickly, wracking his brain for any lesser demons known for their fondness for fedoras. 

None of this was going according to script. Not at all. 

With a long-suffering sigh, he cast a Silencing Charm on the Muggle brats and enjoyed a blissful minute of peace and quiet. Then he turned back to Lizzie, who was sitting cross-legged on the floor and glaring at him with blue eyes identical to her idiot father's. 

"You're _mental_," she concluded. 

"And you're wasting my time." Draco stalked over to the sofa and sat down with great care, not wanting to touch more of the Muggles' furniture than he had to. "Your birth name is Cecily Elizabeth Weasley. I know the Muggles told you that much." 

"Don't you call Mum and Dad bad words!" Lizzie snapped. Then, more sullenly, "And don't call me Cecily." 

Andrew Cunningham sat on the sofa next to Draco, who curled his lip in distaste. The accountant didn't seem to notice. He had laced his hands together in his lap and actually seemed to be remotely in tune with current events. "You are a witch, Lizzie. Your parents were a wizard and a witch. Most of my side of the family are wizards and witches, actually." 

"What, with warts and black cats and everything?" Lizzie squinted at Draco, chin propped on her hand. "He doesn't look like a wizard," she concluded. "He looks like a git." 

Insults weren't part of the script, either. 

"Your mother and father could use magic, honey." Louise Cunningham stopped idly trying to peel one of her sons off the wall and gave Lizzie a sympathetic look. "We got a nice letter about it from Mr. Dumbledore when we took you in. He told us you were going to be a witch too, and that we shouldn't try to stop you from learning magic." 

"That's right," Andrew agreed. "You're too special not to learn." 

Lizzie scowled. "The last time I got called 'special' was when Ms. Forester thought I was a delinquent." 

"You didn't _have_ to use her as target practice, dear." Louise looked rather pained for a moment, but seemed to rally. Apparently using someone as a moving target wasn't the worst thing Lizzie had done. "Your parents' names were Ron and Hermione. I'm sure we told you that at some point." 

This got a nod from the brat. "That's right. They died in a fire." 

Both Andrew and Louise looked at Draco, who glared at them. "You told her they died in a _fire?_" 

"Mr. Dumbledore said we weren't to tell her about magic," Louise said, "and a fire seemed much more logical than...." She waved her hand vaguely. "Than all that." 

Lizzie's eyes narrowed dangerously. "Than all what?" 

Draco motioned for the Cunninghams to be silent. They had done enough damage. "Your mother and father were killed by the Dark Lord. When he tried to get you, you killed him." 

"I did?" Lizzie looked rather confused. "How'd I do that?" 

"I don't know," Draco said, and rubbed at the bridge of his nose in an effort to fight off a migraine. Longbottom owed him for this kind of torment. "That scar is what's left when someone blocks the Killing Curse, but no one knows how you did it." 

"You're the second person in history to survive," Andrew added hopefully. "That's what makes you so special." 

Lizzie didn't look like she felt special. If anything, she looked disconcerted. "This dark lord person was going to kill me too? I was a baby!" 

"You wouldn't have been the first one he killed," Draco said. 

"What a bastard!" 

Louise heaved a long-suffering sigh. "_Language_, dear." 

Lizzie ignored her. "So this evil wizard is gone, right? And I'm gonna be a witch?" 

"That's the idea," Draco muttered, and wished he had thought to bring a pain-killing potion. There was an unpleasant throbbing starting at his temples. Not a stress headache, of course. Malfoys were above that sort of thing. 

"Okay. Cool." The little brat jabbed a finger at her siblings, who were still plastered to the walls. "Can you get them down now? Andy and Quinn are gonna have my head if you don't." 

Draco reluctantly removed the magic holding the horrible Muggle spawns in place. The four older children slid down the walls and landed in heaps, while the fedora-clad little demon plummeted off the ceiling onto the sofa. Rather than looking upset or injured, it just rolled upright and peered at him, grinning maniacally. 

"That's Meggie," Lizzie said as she scrambled to check on her other siblings. She seemed to feel that this explained everything. 

Draco had never heard of a demon called a Meggie, although something about the way it was sucking its thumb and watching him hinted that it might be one of the fouler varieties. He shuddered and turned to Lizzie's foster parents, who were still watching him with polite, vague interest. "I'll be here at seven tomorrow morning to take her to Diagon Alley. Don't make me wait." 

The last things he saw before he Disapparated were the Meggie waving madly at him, and Lizzie tracing her scar as she helped her siblings to their feet. 


End file.
